


bones in your closet

by ghostrunner



Category: Bedlam (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostrunner/pseuds/ghostrunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>rough, proof, nightmares</p>
            </blockquote>





	bones in your closet

Jed is talking in his sleep. 

That’s Ryan’s first thought. That Jed’s having a nightmare or a… vision… thing, and he’s talking in his sleep. Ryan is willing to let this slide. He imagines being Jed is not very pleasant. 

Today they walked through the entire third floor looking for the room where a maid murdered the wife of a doctor. Jed stood in front of every door for a few seconds, steeling himself before he touched the handle. The rooms where nothing happened were almost worse than the right one. 

He’d been so badly shaken by the end of it that Ryan’d had to half carry him back down the stairs. Jed’s arm over his shoulders, tense and strained and pressed so tightly against him Ryan was sure he could feel his heartbeat. 

Jed wanders around the flat shirtless all the time and Ryan looks more than he would be willing to admit but now he knows from firsthand experience what Jed feels like up close. The solid weight of all that muscle. 

It was a long trip back to their flat. 

So today was bad. And long. And now Jed is talking in his sleep. This would be perfectly understandable if he wasn’t saying, “Kate, Kate, Kate,” over and over between gasps for breath.

He’d dreaming about her, Ryan thinks. And then, Good fucking lord, that family. 

There’s the sharp sound of something bumping against the wall, and Ryan thinks Jed has woken himself up but the sounds don’t stop. If anything they get more insistent and now he can tell that sometimes Jed is saying, “Kate, no.” 

Good _fucking_ lord, that family.

There’s a gasp for breath that’s far, far too high pitched to be Jed. 

Ryan throws the covers back and is out of bed and through the door into the living room before he really thinks about what he’s doing. 

Half the time Jed falls asleep on the couch, but he slept his own little room tonight and the door is ajar. Ryan walks up to it, half in a barely awake trance, and half out of horrified curiosity.

He doesn’t bother to peek around the jam, or listen at the keyhole. He puts his hand flat against the door and pushes it creaking open far enough to stand in the middle of the doorway. 

Neither of them notice. 

Jed is sitting up in his bed, shirtless and sleep-tousled and tangled in the sheets. A streetlight outside pours through the window and turns his body into sweeping planes of light and shadow. He looks very much the way Ryan imagines him, whenever he allows himself to imagine coming to Jed’s room in the middle of the night. Except that Kate is kneeling above him. 

Her nightdress is sliding up over her thighs and her hair is falling across Jed’s cheek, his hands on her hips, her waist, her back. They’re kissing like they’re trying to destroy something. Like they know they’re not supposed to. 

Wet and frantic and open-mouthed and Jed is saying, “Kate. Kate, no,” whenever she lets him breathe. 

Kate is ignoring him, digging her long sharp nails into the gilded muscle of his shoulders, clawing at his back. Kissing him like she’s hoping he’ll devour her and she can finally lose herself. 

And part of Ryan, he’ll admit privately, just wants to stand there and watch. Watch as one of the best people he’s ever met gets dragged down and abused by the woman he can’t say no to. Watch Kate, with her sharp bones and her long claws and her razor tongue, strips Jed bare and rides him until his strength gives out. To see how long it takes before they notice him. 

To see what happens when they notice him. 

A part of Ryan wants Jed that badly. Enough that he wants to see all of him, no matter the cost. But a bigger part of Ryan just plain likes Jed. Likes Jed a whole lot more than he likes Kate. 

That better part of Ryan says, “He said, no, Kate.”

They break apart, startled and sudden, flash of guilt. Jed looks stunned, like a trance, broken. Kate’s eyes and face go hard, accusatory. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she snaps.

Ryan has known Kate a long time and he knows that look. She knows she’s wrong, but she’ll never admit it. Ryan refuses to be put on the defensive. He says, very deliberately, “What. The hell. Do you think you’re doing?” 

Kate sneers at him and climbs to her feet. “Turnabout is fair play, I suppose,” she says as she stalks out past him. “He did interrupt us, after all.” 

Her bedroom door opens, and closes behind her. Ryan is looking at Jed. 

His eyes are dark and hazy and a little frightened. He gleams in the glow of the streetlight. 

\--


End file.
